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Gallery Photos

Forums: Questions and Answers About Building Your Site
Created on: 09/28/10 02:55 PM Views: 1931 Replies: 20
Tuesday, September 28, 2010 at 2:55 PM

Past weekend we had our 50th Reunion, and it was a smashing success. As a result, it is looking like I'll be needing to upload 100's of pictures taken. I like the idea of Thumbnail Images defaulting with the Gallery Creator, as I would like classmates to be able to just click and view what they want. I have made several Slide Shows, and usually load them from Vimeo for storage purposes.

It appears if I just want to display the class photos, with Thumbnail views versus a Slide Show, that I will use a lot of Vault Space.

I just want several pages of pictures, not a Slide Show, but don't want to use up my Vault Space since I have lots of space at Vimeo.

Can you tell me how to start doing this, or best suggestions to create such a Gallery?

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Edited 09/28/10 2:56 PM
Tuesday, September 28, 2010 at 3:12 PM - Response #1

One thing to note is that no matter how large your photos are, the system will knock them down to 1,000 pixels wide and compress them nicely for the web. So they'll take up a lot less space than you might be looking at on your local computer.

You can't pull images from Vimeo with Gallery Creator, and frankly I understand that we've got the additional space blocks for purchase currently priced too high. Due to complaints about this we've devised a new "Platinum Member" package with 5 times more storage space so "power users" so to speak can do a lot more without running out of space. You'll also be able to send out emails from yourowndomainname.com instead of our noreply@classcreator.net email address. And with a little luck we'll be providing private FTP services into your File Vault in that package. While not yet publicly available we've been upgrading Admins who ask manually, pricing will be set like this:

Monthly: $16
1 Year: $179
3 Year: $449
5 Year: $649
10 Year: $999

If you don't want to upgrade to this, my best thoughts are you could manually upload a thumb image of each pic and link off to the full sized image at Vimeo, of you could possibly utilize a third party gallery embedded object. We've tried to price the Platinum Member package competitively enough that we're hoping people refrain from utilizing third party hosts and keep everything here, obviously that's better for us and we think it's better for the Admins too.


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Edited 09/28/10 3:13 PM
Tuesday, September 28, 2010 at 3:29 PM - Response #2

Thanks Brad,

I may very well take this offer, especially since we just had our 50th Reunion, which was a BIG SUCCESS and I will write about that on another post later.

From the beginning, I have told my classmates FREE of charges, but a lot of them wanted at the Reunion to "donate" to offset my costs. I'm thinking about how best to take them up on that offer.

Anyway, if that happens, are the prices above the normal Annual renewal costs, but to Platinum Level? I assume that is what I understand. We just started in March, and I only purchased 1 year to see how it goes. I most likely will renew for Multi Years, depending on Donations. Smile

Speaking of Donatios, another subject, how best do I do that in Class Creator? Do I use Reunion Planner and just sell "donations" or what. I want them to feel free to send a few bucks as they feel able, not a set amount.

OH! at the reunion, I also have another class that will purchase Class Creator in a couple months now.

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Edited 09/28/10 3:30 PM
Tuesday, September 28, 2010 at 3:55 PM - Response #3

Brad, you know I love you and you will correct me accordingly, but this topic has just come up and it's a little different but the idea is the same.

I have a classmate who has just had a LOVELY photography show and he would like to upload his pics to a gallery. We all know how much space that would take, and I ain't lettin' him use our space. So I am mentioning that he use photobucket for a slide show and embed it into HIS profile! First of all, as we all do, we think precidence here so that the next classmate that comes along with a cockamamie idea, we have an answer for.

Is this a good idea to save space re: other issues like the reunion photos (since our reunion is next year and I have time to think about that)? I know you want to sell premium level memberships and that is not all bad either, but is this a good answer?

On another subject.....I love you guys and want you to make a living so we can all do this for a long time.... so am I correct on this? It is better to set up our payment options with you so that you can get a cut rather than some bank with PayPal? I do not care about a bank. I care about you guys!

Bringing it back to the original though, we want to use our space wisely and yet offer classmates (ON THEIR OWN PROFILES REMEMBER!!!!) the opportunity to show who they are in their lives today!

Can't wait to hear from you on this one. I will probably be banned from the boards now!

Denise

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Wednesday, September 29, 2010 at 12:10 AM - Response #4

Derrell:

When the Platinum level becomes available we have a formula to pro-rate the total so what you've already paid is factored in to the upgrade cost.

The best way to accept donations is go into your edit home page area and activate the right hand Donate module.

Thanks for the referral, always appreciated.


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Wednesday, September 29, 2010 at 12:24 AM - Response #5

Denise:

Sure it's a reasonable answer. Anything that pulls from another server saves space and bandwidth. It's transparent to the users including you, but File Vault items are not saved here on the Class Creator servers -- they are saved directly to the Amazon.com cloud. There's many millions of items in total and it's the only feasible way to do it. We pay for both storage and transfer on the cloud. While nominal (microcents) it all adds up, meaning we can only do so much for $9 a month. So yes, your solution is quite feasible.

The built-in credit card system is the most automated and saves the most time. But you can set up any "Other" payment types you want, such as PayPal. People think the Reunion Planner is a big profit center here but they're wrong. Competitors have fees up to nearly twice as high as ours. I could go on about that but suffice it to say all kinds of things happen that most people wouldn't even consider, such as reunions getting canceled at the last minute and the Admins not refunding the Classmates, Classmates disputing their credit card charges for legitimate reunion ticket purchases (which all come straight to us), and lots more. So whatever small profit that is built in here is more or less eaten up by Support time anyway. Any class in a reunion year needs considerably more support than a class not in a reunion year. Bottom line, please feel free to set up anything that is best for you -- in the end it really doesn't impact us much one way or the other. But thanks for considering us here, appreciate that.

Oh by the way, we won't ban you from the boards. This time, anyway. Wink


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Wednesday, September 29, 2010 at 5:08 AM - Response #6

Brad,

How do I go about becoming a platinium member now?

I've recently had to increase vault space a few times so the monthly cost to me is more than your monthly platinum package.

Please advise what I need to do as I'm considering transferring the photo slideshows I store offsite to the Galler Creator set-up.

Before I do that though, can you tell me if there's any possibility of you being able to incorporate the 'right-click' 'zoom' ability that currently allows Classmates to enlarge photos on slideshows or make them full screen like I've already got on site? And, on a less important point, are you considering a feature that would allow appropriate frames to be put around a slideshow. As I said, not important, but it does enhance them a little.

Thanks.

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Edited 09/29/10 8:09 PM
Wednesday, September 29, 2010 at 6:45 AM - Response #7

Brad:

I hear you re: the problems that can come up. We were going to do a book last time and when a committee member lost ALL the information (including the list of who paid for the book!) we had very unhappy people. That's not going to happen again because (a) we are not doing any more books (out of four times only once was it an easy matter) and (b) I AM BAAACK and we just won't be having one person have everything any more. Actually with this web site we consider THIS the place!

I will be handling registration and I will be all over every single transaction!! But not everyone is me and I hear what you are saying! I think we will still be giving the fees to you. Thanks for responding and all that you do!

Denise

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Wednesday, September 29, 2010 at 5:49 PM - Response #8

Brad Switzer wrote:

One thing to note is that no matter how large your photos are, the system will knock them down to 1,000 pixels wide and compress them nicely for the web. So they'll take up a lot less space than you might be looking at on your local computer.

You can't pull images from Vimeo with Gallery Creator, and frankly I understand that we've got the additional space blocks for purchase currently priced too high. Due to complaints about this we've devised a new "Platinum Member" package with 5 times more storage space so "power users" so to speak can do a lot more without running out of space. You'll also be able to send out emails from yourowndomainname.com instead of our noreply@classcreator.net email address. And with a little luck we'll be providing private FTP services into your File Vault in that package. While not yet publicly available we've been upgrading Admins who ask manually, pricing will be set like this:

Monthly: $16
1 Year: $179
3 Year: $449
5 Year: $649
10 Year: $999

If you don't want to upgrade to this, my best thoughts are you could manually upload a thumb image of each pic and link off to the full sized image at Vimeo, of you could possibly utilize a third party gallery embedded object. We've tried to price the Platinum Member package competitively enough that we're hoping people refrain from utilizing third party hosts and keep everything here, obviously that's better for us and we think it's better for the Admins too.

Brad, is it correct with my new assumption that Gallery photos do not hit our ClassCreator vault then? The hit the Amazon.com Cloud? Surely, you have that factored in to "Us that tend to use Space". Very Happy

In that aspect, I try to purge the Vault occasionally of duplications and unused stuff. How do I purge Amazon.com Cloud, or is that automatic if I DELETE a Gallery?

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Monday, October 4, 2010 at 12:33 PM - Response #9

Sorry for the late response, I snuck off to Florida for a week and just returned to the real world.

Right clicking on Gallery Creator photos works now.

Gallery Creator photos ARE included in your File Vault space.

Deleting the picture form your File Vault also deletes it form the Amazon.com cloud. It's all seamless to you. In fact unless you read these forums, nobody would likely realize images are being stored at Amazon at all.


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Saturday, September 24, 2011 at 11:06 AM - Response #10

For a regular membership, how much gallery space is included and about how many photos does it hold? 500, 1,000, 2,000 photos? If TJHS upgrades, how much gallery space and how many photos will the additional space hold? (They want to know numbers as they are having their 50th in October.) Thanks.

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Saturday, September 24, 2011 at 12:55 PM - Response #11

The number of photos depends on the size. At 50KB = 4000 pictures, at 100KB = 2000, etc. (at a 200MB file vault size).

It's a good idea to make photos the correct size before uploading, otherwise CC can make it up to 4 times larger. Gallery photos I think are 1024 max wide, home page 420, other pages 646 (please verify).

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Saturday, September 24, 2011 at 2:34 PM - Response #12

Brad's post above says:

One thing to note is that no matter how large your photos are, the system will knock them down to 1,000 pixels wide and compress them nicely for the web. So they'll take up a lot less space than you might be looking at on your local computer.

...so, I'm looking to get an answer from CC. Thanks for your help.

Reply
Edited 09/24/11 2:34 PM
Saturday, September 24, 2011 at 4:07 PM - Response #13

Elizabeth (Liz) Ballenger wrote:

Brad's post above says:

One thing to note is that no matter how large your photos are, the system will knock them down to 1,000 pixels wide and compress them nicely for the web. So they'll take up a lot less space than you might be looking at on your local computer.

...so, I'm looking to get an answer from CC. Thanks for your help.


Unfortunately, that's not true. Try it and see what happens. If it is over the limits the CC compression expands the file size - assuming one has done this properly in the first place. This increase in size used to be true even for images that "fit".

Originally I reported this as a bug when even images I had resized to fit perfectly ended up taking 4X the original vault space. IOW, CC was re-compressing them, which is a NO NO for jpg images. This bug is now fixed.

It is much better to size images locally and compress them locally. jpg compression is a variable amount. Most people do not realize this. For web purposes you can compress down a LOT more than what is commonly done on CC sites.

CC uses a low compression factor (meaning large file size), which I assume is done to keep fidelity when resizing a very large image. That's why it is much better to control this precisely at the local level.

It is very easy to verify this process by just doing some uploads and checking the file size from the browser. It's how I discovered all this.

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Edited 09/24/11 4:10 PM
Saturday, September 24, 2011 at 9:04 PM - Response #14

Here's an example to show you what happens

This is the original image 1600 wide at a file size of 143KB ORIGINAL

This is the same gallery image resized to 1000 wide and it now has a file size of 503KB (GALLERY

So that's a 3.5 size increase for an image that is actually smaller in size. If I start with one that's just a tad over, like 1001, it will be 4 times larger.

Note: I'll remove samples in a few weeks.

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Edited 09/25/11 3:24 AM
Sunday, September 25, 2011 at 2:49 AM - Response #15

And just to clarify. Our yearbook senior year pictures do not count toward our alloted "gallery" space? (We were previously informed that it did not but seeing this thread has us inquiring again. I very carefully posted almost six hundred pictures for all of our classmates profiles so that they would each appear in the upper right corner of their profiles.) Given the amount of space all of those pictures probably take up, I appreciate the opportunity to be able to share these images with our classmates and it is very generous that it doesn't count towards our space limit. The hope is that it is still the case.

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Edited 09/25/11 2:59 AM
Sunday, September 25, 2011 at 2:56 AM - Response #16

Jack Vermeulen wrote:

Elizabeth (Liz) Ballenger wrote:
Brad's post above says:

One thing to note is that no matter how large your photos are, the system will knock them down to 1,000 pixels wide and compress them nicely for the web. So they'll take up a lot less space than you might be looking at on your local computer.

...so, I'm looking to get an answer from CC. Thanks for your help.


Unfortunately, that's not true. Try it and see what happens. If it is over the limits the CC compression expands the file size - assuming one has done this properly in the first place. This increase in size used to be true even for images that "fit".

Originally I reported this as a bug when even images I had resized to fit perfectly ended up taking 4X the original vault space. IOW, CC was re-compressing them, which is a NO NO for jpg images. This bug is now fixed.

It is much better to size images locally and compress them locally. jpg compression is a variable amount. Most people do not realize this. For web purposes you can compress down a LOT more than what is commonly done on CC sites.

CC uses a low compression factor (meaning large file size), which I assume is done to keep fidelity when resizing a very large image. That's why it is much better to control this precisely at the local level.

It is very easy to verify this process by just doing some uploads and checking the file size from the browser. It's how I discovered all this.


The statement about pictures being "fit" does apply for individual senior yearbook pictures that appear in the upper right corner of classmate profile pages. (Class Creator officials assured me of this.)

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Edited 09/25/11 2:57 AM
Sunday, September 25, 2011 at 3:23 AM - Response #17

Correct, profile picture do not count. Nor do any images posted in profiles. There's a secret there.

Original question was about gallery space. I just expanded it to include ALL images that count towards total vault space. Those are images posted in galleries or uploaded via the editor to the file vault.

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Sunday, September 25, 2011 at 3:31 AM - Response #18

Jack Vermeulen wrote:

Correct, profile picture do not count. Nor do any images posted in profiles. There's a secret there.

Original question was about gallery space. I just expanded it to include ALL images that count towards total vault space. Those are images posted in galleries or uploaded via the editor to the file vault.

I understand the original question and the informational expansion.

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Sunday, September 25, 2011 at 8:43 PM - Response #19

Jack, so instead of resizing each picture, as there probably will be 100s (50th reunion), which would be very labor intensive, could the camera be set at a smaller megapixel so that individual photo resizing wouldn't be needed before uploading? I'm looking for the easiest, fastest, least complicated way to get this done. Plus, I need to be able to tell them specifics like, megapixel setting on camera that will still give them a decent photo that can be downloaded by alumni and still look good. They're going to have an alumni (who has a professional photography studio) take the pics. I imagine they megapixels will be huge since it will be done professionally. I just need to be able to give the some direction so that they can decide which way to go. Thanks for all your info and advice.

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Sunday, September 25, 2011 at 10:11 PM - Response #20

The obvious: Good images depend on the camera (newer and more expensive ones do a much better job - especially in low light) and then there's image size.

Images in the 2000-3000 pixel wide range are plenty good for this work. I would not go below this since one can always reduce but not the other way around. It is especially useful when cropping images.

If someone has a pro camera that does even better, I suggest to use it. For group pictures you will be very happy to have such a large format to work with.

Now to your concern about the amount of work. I have just edited about 500 pictures (resizing, cropping and color adjustments). The hardest part for me was deciding which pictures to select. That meant making sure I had a picture of everyone and not necessarily the best pictures.

If one does not crop or make any other adjustment other than size, it goes really fast. I can resize about 180 images an hour (+ breaks). About 20 seconds: Click on image in explorer, select Edit, go to image in editor, click resize (settings are already set), click save. Next one.

Be sure to preserve the original images. Make a copy on DVD or a duplicate on your HD for other uses.

For a size of 1000 wide, experiment with the compression to get an image that looks good on web, but isn't too large. With middle compression you should be able to get a pretty good image that has a file size of about 100KB

For doing more involved work with cropping and color adjustments (most images will benefit here) it is a lot slower, but not bad. Maybe around 30 an hour. I just did it over a few weeks.

It was both a chore and fun.Wink Hope that helps

PS. One caveat - Very large images require large amounts of memory. A newer system with around 6GB minimum should work. Mine is 8GB.

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